Category Archives: Listening

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Podcast

I was first intro­duced to pod­cast­ing by Todd Burns, my edi­tor at [Sty­lus Magazine](http://stylusmagazine.com). He was way out in front on that, bring­ing read­ers the Sty­cast far more often than they deserved. Sure, it may have sound­ed like a painful eye prob­lem, it was much fur­ther ahead of its time than I realized. 

Since then I’d describe my rela­tion­ship with pod­casts as aspi­ra­tional; I treat them like I would chal­leng­ing books or a Bela Tarr movie. I find myself load­ing up on inter­est­ing shows that are all over the map, only to find the badge of unheard shows grow­ing dai­ly. I’d delete them from my iPod and for­get about them for months before skulk­ing back to them like I need­ed to take my med­i­cine. What was it about them that turned me off? 

Were they too ama­teur­ish? Too pro­fes­sion­al? Sim­ply too long?

While they may not have become the enter­tain­ment jug­ger­naut the pod­cast pio­neers thought they might become, pod­casts have come of age rather nice­ly. There are sev­er­al I lis­ten to reg­u­lar­ly, includ­ing Jesse Thorn’s Bulls­eye, a few Ear­wolf shows and The Low Times, host­ed by Philly ex-pats Mag­gie Sero­ta and Daniel Ral­ston, along with some guy Chuck Wool­ery blocked on Twit­ter. I’m also watch­ing a few from TWiT.tv in an effort to get more out of my iPhone and iPad. See? I told you I was aspirational!

I still over­reach: will I ever real­ly lis­ten to the Leonard Lopate show? Some episodes of The Moth are so serious!

What are your favorites? Tell me about them!

Yo La Tengo: Great Rock Band or Greatest Rock Band?

Here’s some­thing I scrib­bled about @TheRealYLT back in 2007. It’s still so true. Need more proof? Fine. Check out these clips of a reunit­ed Pussy Galoredaz­zling the crowd at Maxwell’s last week. Let’s not for­get the fact that Yo La Ten­go are still play­ing their stan­dard 8 night Hanukkah run while Ira recov­ers from an undis­closed ill­ness. Since I could­n’t make it to any of their shows this week, I’m lis­ten­ing to every­thing Yo La Ten­go on Spo­ti­fy. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it’s per­fect for this week.

These guys are seri­ous­ly the great­est, most gen­er­ous act in indie rock and I can’t help but think peo­ple still take them for grant­ed, because, well, they do.

(I’d be remiss if I did­n’t link over to Jesse Jarnow’s online home, Frank & Earthy, for full setlists from these shows.)

Last Guy on Earth to Subscribe to Spotify

This is how I used to feel about music 2.0. Now I’m more than will­ing to spend $10 a month to lis­ten to what­ev­er I like, give or take. I will say that the playlists fea­ture is pret­ty great, espe­cial­ly now that I’m not a music edi­tor who would’ve been tasked with assem­bling them. Tedious work, that. That said, I’m enjoy­ing the Pitch­fork Top 100 songs playlist right now. Point me toward good playlists and I will add them.

I’d love to see them add a book­mark fea­ture so I could cat­a­log titles I find as I surf around the web. Think Instapa­per, but for music.

A Year Without Music

2011 was excep­tion­al­ly qui­et for me on the musi­cal front. After keep­ing tabs loose­ly through the tail end of 2010, I left the music crit­ic rat race alto­geth­er this year, bare­ly both­er­ing to see what even my favorite crit­ics thought about music. Why? Well, it’s an ongo­ing trend that I dis­liked from the moment I start­ed get­ting paid for writ­ing about music: niche sen­sa­tion­al­ism. When I real­ized I could­n’t get worked up (or excit­ed about) micro­gen­res like “chill­wave,” or that I did­n’t feel an urgent desire to have a take on artists rang­ing from Gaga to Odd Future, I knew my days as a crit­ic were numbered.

Sad to say, I don’t miss it. Yes, it was often fun to shout words of encour­age­ment from the crit­i­cal side­lines as real crit­ics bat­tled for pri­ma­cy in online forums of all  kinds, but I had no real stake in it. I did­n’t feel that par­tic­i­pa­tion was vital to my life in any way. It just seemed sil­ly that adults were mak­ing the­se impas­sioned, intel­li­gent argu­ments about artists whose impact was felt by a dwin­dling num­ber of lis­ten­ers. How guys like Tom Ewing find the time and ener­gy to write such thought­ful pieces as this recent Pop­ti­mist col­umn while bal­anc­ing work and a young fam­i­ly amazes me. By the way, that piece I linked sums up my feel­ings on this phe­nom­e­non — Tom calls it “nanocul­ture” — far more elo­quent­ly that I can muster. But the sense of world-weari­ness that I felt when com­mis­er­at­ing via chat with Mau­ra and Chris was more than I could bear. There was no sense in pre­tend­ing that I cared at all about the sub­ject. It was sim­ply time to go.

What did I actu­al­ly lis­ten to this year? Old stuff and lots of it. I now unashamed­ly lis­ten to music that I’ve loved for a decade or more. It’s nice to return to old favorites. I’m lov­ing what some of my old favorites are releas­ing now, too, anoth­er sign that the game has passed me by. When you find your­self enrap­tured with a new J. Mas­cis album in 2011, chances are you’re too hope­less­ly nos­tal­gic to be rel­e­vant to any audi­ence out­side the Mag­net Mag­a­zine set and that’s some­one I nev­er want to be. Befriend­ing Mark made it clear that I sim­ply did­n’t have the sta­mi­na or endurance to be a crit­ic in the age of Tumblr.

But you know what? The flip­side of this is that “dis­cov­ery,” a term that made me retch as a crit­ic, is some­thing I tru­ly can enjoy now. When you’re not being bom­bard­ed by emails offer­ing inter­views and tick­ets to artists you’ve nev­er heard of, it’s much eas­i­er to fil­ter out all that noise and just enjoy read­ing about artists, sam­pling their music and mak­ing choic­es about what you want to hear. When the pres­sure of try­ing to hear every­thing melts away it’s nice to be selec­tive and real­ly immerse your­self in a record­ing. It breathes new life into the year end lists I’ve spent the bet­ter part of a decade ignor­ing. I find myself want­i­ng to read about music again in a way I haven’t since blurbs in the mar­gins of Newsweek first caught my atten­tion 15 years ago. It’s exciting!

So tell me what I should check out in 2011? Did I miss any­thing? Still haven’t lis­tened to that Odd Future record…

In Praise of Spoon

I know peo­ple have cooled on their steely grooves, but I don’t know how I would’ve got­ten through 2002–2007 with­out steady dos­es of Spoon. Two songs in par­tic­u­lar that gal­va­nized my will when it was bent near the break­ing point: “That’s the Way We Get By” and “The Underdog.”

Can’t lis­ten to either of these tunes with­out being trans­port­ed back in time. The for­mer reminds me of a sweaty sum­mer spent in Brook­lyn, punch­ing F5 on craigslist or inter­view­ing for jobs for which I was but one of hun­dreds of appli­cants. I’d turn this all the way up as I sat on my futon, scrap­ing by on adjunct lec­tur­er’s wages and what­ev­er was left on my stu­dent loans. The lat­ter takes me to a bet­ter place: final­ly back on the job after near­ly a year out of work. It was their brand new album at the time and I had a hard time believ­ing that “The Under­dog” was­n’t my per­son­al anthem that summer.

A few years on and I keep find­ing myself com­ing back to these records. I can’t think of a band whose body of work has more close­ly fit my moods over more than a decade of fandom.